Chances are that the next weeks will bring a bit of Nutcracker into your life. We offer some perspective with Gregory Weatherford’s article about a troupe of ballerinas on the cusp of womanhood, competing for roles in the famous ballet about the hard-jawed hero. By Greg Weatherford. Most of the ballerinas are girls between the ages of...

This weekend spend some time with Midge, Barbie’s best friend. Besides being a literary critic, novelist, teacher, and Broad Street‘s editorial director, Susann Cokal is a lifelong scholar of all things Barbie, with several pieces published on the subject. In this essay, Cokal explores what it means to be a best friend through the medium of...